Those that are looking to get more involved in electronics usually end up wanting to buy some equipment to be able to do soldering. The question that comes up time and time again is what exactly to buy. I put together this list of equipment which is the basic kit you'll need to get started doing serious solder work.

It may be too pricey for those on budget, so if it's really out of your price range, take a look at one of the Hakko 936 clone stations which can be had for under $50 and change out the iron tip with a genuine Hakko tip which are about $10. But. save up because you'll want to get this one eventually anyway.

Hakko diagonal cutters - $4.37These are really nice cutters, especially for the price. The way they are angled you can almost use them as flush cutters and they're great for trimming long leads on through hole boards. They do eventually wear out, but for under $5 it's not a problem. I use my worn out ones to cut things I'm not supposed to with them like plastic cases.

Solder - $7This is some Kester 60/40 rosin core solder. My favorite brand is actually Multicore and I like using 63/37 better, but it's hard to find in small quantities. Kester is a good brand and I buy these small tubes for solder sizes I use less often.

Solder sucker - $6If you do any soldering, very quickly you will find the need to do some desoldering. In order to desolder through-hole components, you will need a solder sucker to pull solder out of the hole.

Solder flux - $8 *check DigikeyFlux is the #1 key to soldering. The sooner you learn that, the sooner you will be successful at and enjoy soldering. I recommend using rosin flux and this tube from SRA makes applying flux to your joint easy.

Solder wick - $7 *check DigikeySolder wick is like a sponge for solder. You will use wick anywhere you need to remove solder, except from through holes (which is what the solder sucker is for). There's a lot of terrible solder wick out there which is generally useless to harmful. Don't cheap out; get the good stuff which is what this MG Chemical wick is.

Wire strippers - $10These are decent wire strippers similar to the Hakko cutters. They aren't the best but they're more than serviceable and, again, great for the price. I use these and I haven't found a reason yet to pay for more expensive ones.

Helping hands - $7 *check Harbor FreightHelping hands have alligator clips to help you hold parts close together so you can solder them. I have some similar to this I got at Harbor Freight for a few dollars.

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WEP 858D Hot Air Rework Soldering Station - $55 (optional)Hot air stations blow hot air to melt solder. They are very useful when working with surface mount (SMD) parts, especially when you need to desolder SMD components (sometimes called "rework"). They can also come in handy for desoldering multi-pin through hole parts because they can heat up all the pins at once. And, hot air is almost a necessity if you want to solder BGA package components. This hot air station not the greatest, but it's adequate for hobbyists, and better stations can cost $400 or more. Most hobbyist don't need a hot air station, so consider this item an optional, but very nice-to-have.

This is a work in progress. This is my initial attempt at the front end/client side of a WiFi controllable reflow oven. It's just html and Javascript so it should work on any OS or phone device using the web browser.

The first screen allows you to create a reflow profile, save it, or open an existing profile. The second screen shows the reflow profile target as the blue line and then plots the actual temperature over time in orange. Right now I don't have it actually hooked up to anything, so I'm simulating the temperature reading data.

I put together a basic ESP8266 Arduino example sketch for how to get it working. It's just slightly different than some of the ones that were published by seeedstudio etc including some changes in the baud rates that worked for me. I also put together a schematic on how to wire up everything. Be sure to use level shifters on the Arduino TX line if you aren't using a 3V Arduino like I did.

There's a new, low-cost wifi chip on the market. You can now get the chip built onto a serial module board shipped from China for about $5 through aliexpress, although it takes about 3 weeks to get them in the mail. You can now get them much faster shipped from the US for about the same price .

The ESP8266 module I got looks just like an HC-05 Bluetooth module and works about the same way with AT commands over serial. There's not much documentation out on it yet, but there's a community starting to develop around it.

I built a little proof-of-concept demo around it. The demo is a web site hosted on google app engine that allows you to control the brightness of an LED connected to an Arduino. The Arduino polls the web site via the WiFi module and updates the brightness of the LED as you change the slider on the webpage. More documentation to come, but here's a quick gif of the ESP8266 demo in action

Hackaday had this article on how to remove rust using electrolysis a few weeks ago. I happened to be right in the middle of a project fixing up my old, rusty lawn mower. So, I lashed this thing together in an evening to try it out. It works pretty well!

Each piece of rebar is held in place by a copper wire. The wire is run through some drilled holes around the rebar. The rebar is actually soldered to the copper wire. To solder the wire to the rebar, I first notched the rebar with an angle grinder. I then used some plumbing flux to clean the surface and a MAPP gas torch to heat it. I actually used some rosin core, leaded electronics solder to make the joint. It actually wetted pretty easily.

Another wire runs all the way around the bucket. Each of the rebar wires is twisted around the main wire. I twisted a bunch of excess wire at the end of the loop to create a thick enough terminal to easily clamp onto.

"Grounding is undoubtedly one of the most difficult subjects insystem design. While the basic concepts are relatively simple, implementation is very involved. Unfortunately, there is no “cookbook” approach that will guarantee good results, and there are a few things that, if not done well, will probably cause headaches."